Particularities of the Immune Response in Persons Professionnally Exposed to Beryllium

Abstract

An examination was performed of 50 employees at an enterprise where they were in professional contact with beryllium. In most workers, it was detected an increase of interleukine-8, interferon- , growing level of immunoglobulin E and circulating immune complexes. It was shown that the contact with beryllium compounds leads to the interferon- level growth only in women. In men, alterations are identified in the direction of increased concentrations of common immunoglobulin E and circulating immune complexes.